


Tenancy Agreement

by Riona



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 07:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19807348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: JD’s kissed Carla, he’s kissed Turk in an attempt to make up for it, and he’s really struggling to forget about either of those things.





	Tenancy Agreement

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched episode 4.22, 'My Big Move', and suddenly all I could think about was JD/Turk/Carla. Here's a fic!

It’s kind of haunting JD. How did he end up kissing Carla? How did that happen? Sure, they were both drunk, but it’s not like JD would have kissed _anyone_ he’d been drunkenly lying next to on that carpet. Elliot: fine, probably. Nurse Roberts: probably not. The janitor: no, God no. Unless he disguised himself as Carla somehow.

No, not Carla! Elliot! Or someone else JD is actually _allowed_ to think about kissing!

The point is—

The point is, he’s not _into_ Carla, right? And he knows Carla’s not into him; she’s totally in love with Turk, just like anyone would be.

But then how did they end up kissing?

-

He ends up kissing Turk, just to demonstrate how _completely_ not a big deal his kiss with Carla was. Yeah, maybe JD can’t stop thinking about it, but still. Totally not a big deal.

Weirdly, kissing Turk doesn’t immediately fix whatever’s going on in his head. He thinks it might just have caused more problems.

It’s not the first or even the third time he’s kissed Turk. But it’s the first time it’s felt like there’s been intent behind it. It’s not a drunken face-bump or a game of spin-the-bottle; JD was striding through the hospital corridors, _planning_ to kiss Turk. Feeling that anticipation rising in his gut.

And, sure, he just wanted to show him that his kiss with Carla wasn’t that big a deal. But, somewhere in that build-up, it feels like something else might have crept in.

He’s imagining things, right?

It’s not like he _wanted_ to kiss Turk. He had to. There was definitely, definitely no other way to resolve this.

-

Okay. Being around Turk and Carla has abruptly become extremely weird.

He lives with Turk and Carla.

That might be a problem.

He doesn’t have a plan. There’s a non-zero chance he’ll end up sharing the Todd’s bed in a banana hammock again. And he’ll miss them. But he might need to get out of here. Elliot’s visiting right now, she feels like a kind of buffer, but she can’t be here all the time, and somehow the prospect of being in the apartment with his best friend and his best-friend-in-law and _nobody else_ seems to have become terrifying.

He braces himself.

“Hey, guys, I know we talked about this before, but I’m moving out.”

Turk looks at him, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, if by ‘talked about it’ you mean we kicked you out and then ended up _begging_ you to come back, like, a couple weeks ago.”

“What’s made you think we don’t need you any more?” Carla asks.

“Hey, baby,” Turk says, “I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with you saying that to the guy you kissed.” He focuses on JD. “Why are you thinking we don’t need you any more?”

Okay, yeah, JD should probably hold firm on this. But it feels really good to hear that they need him.

“You need your space, right?” he asks.

“We need our JD,” Carla says.

“Okay, Carla,” Turk says, “you’re not wrong, but, again, not sure how I feel about you saying this stuff to someone you made out with.”

“We didn’t _make out_ ,” JD mutters, trying not to picture making out with Carla.

Like he’s ever succeeded in not picturing anything.

It’s kind of warm in here, right? Maybe he should open a window.

“Hey, don’t let Turk put all the guilt on you, Carla,” Elliot says. “He kissed JD as well. You get to be jealous too.”

“What?” Carla asks.

Turk shakes his head sharply. “Mm-mm! No! He kissed _me_.”

“ _What?_ ” Carla asks.

“Right in the cafeteria,” Elliot says. “Like, three hours ago.”

“ _Elliot_ ,” Turk hisses.

“What?” Elliot asks. “It was in front of everyone. She’s going to hear about it.”

“It was just to demonstrate what we did!” JD exclaims. “It was totally normal and there were absolutely no other feelings involved.”

“Wait, he _knew_ what we did,” Carla says. “I demonstrated with Elliot. Remember?”

JD definitely remembers. “Yeah, but... but he had to actually _feel_ the kiss so he could know there’s no way there could be any inappropriate emotions behind something like that, okay, he had to _feel_ it.”

No inappropriate emotions at all.

God, he’s so screwed.

“Anyway,” he says, “I appreciate it, you guys mean a lot to me, but I really think it’d be a bad idea for me to stay here.”

“Look, seriously,” Turk says, “I know it’s been a weird couple days, but I want you to stay.”

“Maybe you could take a few days to think about it?” Carla asks.

Maybe that’s not a bad idea. Maybe all the kissing is just too fresh in JD’s mind for things to feel comfortable, and everything’ll be back to normal a week from now.

“I guess,” he says.

Turk reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. JD explodes in a shower of butterflies.

He’s _so_ screwed.

-

“Doesn’t it bother you?” JD asks, playing Uno with Turk. “Having me and Carla around each other? Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if I moved out?”

“I’m starting to feel like you _want_ me to be pissed off with you,” Turk says. “What happened to ‘oh, it was totally innocent, it was nothing’?”

“It was definitely both of those things,” JD says, quickly. “I’m just thinking about how _you’re_ feeling. You know, ’cause I’m such an incredibly good friend who has nothing to hide.”

Turk reverses the direction of play, which obviously doesn’t make much of a difference with only two players, so, in compliance with house rules, they switch places on the couch. Turk clambers over JD. This never felt weird before. Crap!

“I mean, yeah, I won’t pretend it hasn’t been on my mind,” Turk says. He pauses. “Do you ever find yourself, like... uncontrollably picturing things?”

“Uh, dude, you know I do,” JD says. Unless... wait. Unless he’s been imagining all those conversations with Turk about how often he imagines things?

“It was the only thing I was able to think about, after you told me,” Turk says. “You and Carla. I was just... seeing it, non-stop.”

JD stares at him for a few seconds. Sneaks a quick glance at the door to the bedroom Turk shares with Carla. “So, uh, when you say you were seeing it...”

Turk shakes his head. “Don’t ask me to describe it, man.”

JD really, really wants him to describe it. Really desperately needs to hear Turk describing him making out with Carla. Or maybe more? He has an actual medical need to know.

“No, that’s fine, I wasn’t gonna ask,” he says. “But it’s not on your mind so much any more?”

Turk looks uncomfortable. “I mean, not the same way. Not since the cafeteria thing.”

Calling it _the cafeteria thing_ instead of just saying _not since you kissed me_ makes it feel like it has more weight, somehow. Which isn’t good, because it already feels like it has _way_ too much weight in JD’s head. It wasn’t supposed to be a big thing!

“So what’s changed?” he asks, watching Turk carefully. He’s not sure what he’s looking for.

Turk touches his fingers to his lips. (His _own_ lips. Absolutely not JD’s.) Hesitates. “Can we stop talking about this?”

“Yeah, of course.”

JD plays a ‘reverse direction’ card.

Is he a bad person?

-

Look, sometimes you just happen to overhear your roommates talking about you. Sometimes you stumble and coincidentally end up with your ear pressed against their bedroom door. It happens.

Frustratingly, he can’t actually make out what Turk and Carla are saying, in the four minutes he spends pressed up against the door, trying to get his balance. But he’s definitely catching his name in there sometimes.

Are they discussing work? Are they talking about the fact that he’s kissed both of them? Are they planning to make their living situation less complicated by selling him to the janitor?

Maybe they somehow know he’s listening in, and they’re just talking about how weird that is.

And now the words he can’t hear properly sound like they’re getting more sultry (“So, baby, what do you think the janitor’s going to do to JD?” Carla asks seductively in his head, stripping off her top), and they’re going to have sex, he’s pretty sure, and if he listens any longer he is actively going to be listening to his friends having sex.

He should move away from the door, right? He should definitely do that.

-

Twenty minutes later, Turk opens the bedroom door and JD falls through it.

“Whoa!” Turk exclaims, at the same time Carla (sitting up on the bed, wearing a nightdress, upsettingly sexy, at least they’re clothed) says, “Oh, JD, are you okay?”

“I just fell!” JD says, scrambling to his feet. “I just tripped and fell against the door, literally just now, just as you opened it, it’s a really cool coincidence actually—”

“Dude,” Turk says, “you remember I gave you permission, right?”

“Permission?” Carla asks.

“Back in college,” Turk says. “I said it was fine for him to listen to me gettin’ it on if he didn’t have a girlfriend and he needed something to get him off.”

Carla raises her eyebrows. “Okay, wow. Saving the question of whether _my_ permission means anything for another day, I can’t believe we haven’t had this discussion earlier.”

“What discussion?” JD asks, immediately.

Turk clears his throat. “Uh. We were actually talking about you.”

Which kind of makes it sound like they were talking about him _during_ sex. There _was_ some talk during. Was it about him?

JD kind of feels like he’s on fire. He feels like he’s just standing here, on fire, trying to fake a casual conversation. “So... what were you saying? How much did the janitor offer you?”

“What?” Turk asks. “We were talking about why you suddenly want to move out.”

It’s not that he _wants_ to. It’s that being around Turk and Carla was so comfortable for so long, and now it’s somehow suddenly become unbearable, for reasons that scare him too much to look directly at them.

“I just... I know it freaked you out,” JD mumbles. “That you couldn’t live here without me. And I figure, you know, you’ll learn how to live on your own if you have a chance to _be_ on your own.”

Turk and Carla glance at each other.

“I don’t know if it’s a _problem_ in our relationship, that we couldn’t really handle living together without you around,” Carla says. “Maybe... maybe it means we were thinking too small, when we thought our relationship was just the two of us.”

JD looks from her to Turk. He’s been so busy feeling tense that he hasn’t really registered, until this moment, how tense the two of them are.

But they’re not saying...

That’d be crazy, they can’t be saying...

“I mean, you’ve been there from day one, right?” Carla asks. “It was pretty clear from the moment I met you guys that Turk was kind of a package deal.”

Turk nods. “It’s always been us, man. And then I met Carla, and... I don’t know, maybe I was bringing her into something that was already there and I didn’t even realise it.”

Okay. He needs to _very subtly_ feel out whether they’re talking about threesomes, because he’s been wrong about this before.

“Are you saying you guys want this ass?” he asks. “Because it is _yours_.” No! Too eager, too obvious! “I mean, if you want. I don’t care.”

Carla raises her eyebrows. “You’re saying you have _no opinion_ on romantically becoming a part of our marriage?”

Ha! They _are_ talking about threesomes! He’s not imagining things for once!

Holy crap, they’re talking about threesomes.

“What would that, uh.” He isn’t dreaming, right? “What would that mean, exactly? Romantically becoming a part of your marriage? I mean, like... we’d make out, right? Can we make out? Are you asking me to make out with you?”

“We’d live together,” Carla says. “We’d cook and eat together. We’d talk. We’d support each other. We’d do life admin. Sometimes we’d cuddle on the couch.”

“We already do all of those things,” JD points out.

“Yeah, we’d make out,” Turk says.

“Awesome,” JD whispers.

-

JD’s in the middle of moaning Turk’s name when the door to the on-call room flies open, and all three of them freeze. He really hopes it’s not the Todd again.

It’s Dr Cox. JD quickly rearranges himself on the bed, making sure the better-looking of his nipples is the one on display, before he registers that Dr Cox has his hand over his eyes.

“Okay,” Dr Cox says, “I have seen _more_ than enough to scar me for life without adding this to the list, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard enough to know what’s going on here. Gandhi, I can’t say I’m _surprised_ that you and Belinda are getting it on, but you’ve put me in the position of being morally obliged to tell your _other_ wife, and then, given my current relationship with Jordan, I’m morally obliged _not_ to catch her on the rebound, and I’d _really_ appreciate it if you’d relieve me of some of this moral burden by talking to Carla about this yourself or, ideally, travelling back in time and never inflicting yourself on her in the first place.”

“Oh, she knows,” Carla says, hooking her bra back on one-handed (how does she _do_ that?).

Dr Cox drops his hand from his eyes. He stares.

“Uh,” JD says. “Hey, Dr Cox.”

“Carla,” Dr Cox says. “I don’t respect a lot of people. The list is pretty much you and...” He pulls a face. “I _want_ to say me, but actually it’s pretty much just you. You’re telling me that _not only_ did you marry Gandhi, but you’re sleeping with _this_ idiot?”

“I guess I just have terrible taste,” Carla says, innocently. “You wait until you hear about the date I went on with an older colleague. He took me to this pizza parlour and he _would not stop talking_ about his ex-wife—”

Dr Cox makes a disgusted noise and stalks out of the room. Carla collapses laughing against JD’s collarbone.


End file.
